FounderQuest

Ben and Josh discuss the benefits and perils of using AI assistants for programming. Cursor Codeium Windsurf GitHub Copilot announcement Perplexity

Ben, Josh, and John Nunemaker are back from RubyConf and take the opportunity to discuss how to sponsor a conference as a small software company. Protip: bring your furniture from home. https://wiki.c2.com/?ResultObjectPattern= https://www.chairigami.com https://twenty.com https://rubycentral.org/news/make-railsconf-happen/ Adam’s Judo Scale infomercial https://boxoutsports.com/graphics/multi-form...

Ben and Josh go off-script for a fun and hopefully-not-too-long chat about their favorite Twitter-like social network, Bluesky. https://faineg.substack.com/p/how-i-accidentally-ruined-bluesky The hosts of WSUA9 call it skeeting on air AOC endorses “team skeets” Jake Tapper says “skeeted” live on CNN Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech by Mike Masnick Composable modera...

Josh and Ben reconnect with their friend JP Boily to discuss building his startup Metrics Watch for just over 9 years before finding a new owner on Acquire.com. Bluesky startups & bootstrappers starter pack Join the Honeybadger/FounderQuest Discord server! https://metricswatch.com/ https://github.com/topfunky/gruff https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer https://jumpstartrails.com https://m...

Josh and Ben catch up with John Nunemaker after Rails World and dig into John's recent acquisition of Fireside.fm, the podcasting platform created by Dan Benjamin. What's next for John? In short, he's curating some Very Good Software™. https://www.johnnunemaker.com/acquiring-fireside/ https://www.johnnunemaker.com/how-to-find-a-business-partner/ https://danbenjamin.com/ http://sifterapp.com/ https...

Ben, Josh, and John discuss pricing, including how to approach pricing, what they do and don't like about pricing, and how pricing works at Honeybadger and Flipper. https://cottonbureau.com/p/9EMACZ/shirt/the-process#/17943854/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-m https://blog.flippercloud.io/per-seat-pricing-sucks/ https://garrettdimon.com/journal/posts/data-modeling-saas-entitlements-an...

While Josh is on vacation, Ben chats with guests Will King and John Nunemaker about the process and perils of trying to ship reliably.  https://www.wking.dev/logs/shipping-in-layers https://longform.asmartbear.com/slc/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product https://archive.ph/20130719182750/http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm https://www.amazon.com/How-Fight-Hydra-Ambitions-De...

Ben and Josh catch up after a few weeks of heads-down product work, and they have lots to talk about—including a new Discord server for FounderQuest listeners! Plus, hear Josh’s thesis on why it’s a huge problem if you’re not using your product to the max. Shape Up Seth Godin Blue Ridge Ruby Monitorama Join the Honeybadger Discord! https://discord.gg/aQaDVBedRf

Longtime friend of the pod Adam McCrea joins Josh and Ben to catch up and chat about his journey building Judoscale—an autoscaling service for Heroku, Render, and AWS! Blue Ridge Ruby Josh’s Blue Ridge Ruby recap Kyle Shold Printfection JudoScale SignWell Heroku Add-ons Router blog post: https://judoscale.com/blog/heroku-router-post-mortem

John Nunemaker returns to FounderQuest to discuss his writing process—after the guys debate code linters and formatters, of course. It's important to start with the essentials. Links: Standardrb Josh’s 2013 Ruby Style Guide GitHub Copilot Copilot Chat for Neovim Seth Godin Amy Hoy My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins This book will teach you how to write better by Neville Medhora Carbon

Josh and Ben are joined by John Nunemaker to discuss their recent trip to Detroit for RailsConf, as well as the announcement from RubyCentral that 2025 will mark the final RailsConf (though not the last Rails conference!). Later in the episode, Josh and Ben reveal the outcome of their Honeybadger Insights launch goal and discuss the team's last dev cycle. John also shares an update on his work wit...

This week, Josh and Ben dive deep into the marketing strategy for their new product, Insights, in response to a listener question. They talk about what groups they are targeting first, some of the planned marketing tactics for reaching each group, and how they are building awareness within the Honeybadger app without annoying existing users. Links: pg_cron Judoscale Traction Insights tour page  In...

This week Josh and Ben discuss shipping Insights, what's next for the product, and their strategies to get people to actually use it. Plus Ben shares the results from his latest performance science projects. Grab your safety glasses and headphones! Links: Lab Tech Yabeda Yabeda for Insights Vector Fluentd Evil Martians blog Scientist Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadg...

This week Josh and Ben discuss shipping a Clickhouse migration and Honeybadger's new look. They also talk about Exceptional Creatures hitting number one on Hacker News and being featured at the top of Ruby Weekly. Plus, did Ben get interviewed by a rubber duck? Links: Exceptional Creatures Kamal Daily Lex Clickhouse Activerecord Scientist RealGeeks  Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @Founde...

Today Josh and Ben are talking about UI changes in order to lay the foundation to launch and integrate Insights into Honeybadger as well as steps they are taking to avoid some rollout mistakes they've made in the past. They also reveal how testers are liking Insights so far! Links: Derek Sivers Flipper Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social  Twitter - @honeybadge...

GOOAAALLL!!! This week Ben and Josh discuss how to get Honeybadger's growth back on track by setting a company-wide goal. They also talk about how to promote new features in your product without annoying your users and what Santa brought them for Christmas! Links: BHAG Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social  Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honeybadger

This week Josh and Ben discuss Honeybadger's recent revenue struggles, how they got to this point, and the steps they're taking to weather the storm. They also explain why 2024 could be the company's best year ever! Links: Steve Jobs - "Saying No" Meet the badgers FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social  Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honeybadger

Kevin joins Josh and Ben again this week as the trio discusses Honeybadger's hack week, processes for making bold UI/UX changes, what to do/not do if your customers hate said UI/UX changes, plus the latest trends in Crocs fashion! Links Crocs Joel on Software - Things you should never do DHH Business of Software Everyday Information Architecture Meet the badgers Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby Clic...

It's a trifecta of badgers this week as Honeybadger's own Kevin Webster takes us on a deep dive into the genesis of his baby/our new product, Insights. There is also a discussion around the challenges of dealing with burnout plus the Holy Hand Grenade! Links Meet the badgers ClickHouse - hosted by DoubleCloud FounderQuest Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social  Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Honey...

This week Josh and Ben give further insights into Insights and discuss challenges around shoehorning a new product into an existing one. They also talk about marketing strategies, a Las Vegas trip, and disaster recovery! All this and more in this week's episode! Links Ahoy Heya ClickHouse - hosted by DoubleCloud Michele Hansen - "When done well, marketing and teaching are nearly indistinguishable...

FounderQuest is back for episode 100! Learn why FounderQuest is down to two hosts. Listen to tales of hosting lavish RailsConf parties. Plus, don't miss the details of the secret upcoming product release that has been a year in the making! Links: Mastodon - @FounderQuest@honeybadger.social  Twitter - @honeybadgerapp Website  

Show notes: Links: Garrett Dimon Minitest Heat Heat Map Reporter for Minitest Review Starting & Sustaining Sifter App Automated transcript (only about 70% accurate) Ben   Welcome to FounderQuest, this has been Today, I'm interviewing Garrett Diamond Star and josh are taking the day off and I get a chat with Garrett, who's a longtime friend of mine and fantastic entrepreneur and all around grea...

Show notes: Links: Sweaty Startup Hook Relay Spider season Write for Honeybadger Automated transcript (only about 75% accurate) Ben    So I've been, I've been using Hook Relay over the past week and I got to say, there's nothing as useful as using your own product to make you see places where the product can be improved. So I've, I've opened a couple of issues. Yeah, yeah. And uh, I mean, they're...

Show notes: Links: Hook Relay SSL Server Test Second brand marketing tips Twitter thread  Xhtmlchop Hook Relay Twitter announcement Hook Relay blog announcement Derrick Reimer & Corey Haines Product Hunt launch  Startup Director List  Indie Hackers launch repeatedly Not very accurate auto-generated transcript: Ben  -  you know, last week I recorded a quick little message talking about why we w...

Show notes: Links: Umm...here's a picture of a Honeybadger sleeping on our 404 page . He's definitely sleeping. Transcription: *Note, transcription is paraphrased with 1.3% accuracy Ben "Expired certificates, yada yada yada, internet broke...no episode. Bada-boom-bada-bing, have a good weekend."